


Push Away the Unimaginable

by jule1122



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Joe is not ready to forgive Booker, Joe loves Nicky, M/M, Nicky loves Joe, mentions of canon torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jule1122/pseuds/jule1122
Summary: But that leaves Joe, Joe who hasn’t spoken to him or looked directly at him the entire eight months he’s been there.  Booker has no idea how he’ll survive another ninety-seven years alone, but he knows he can’t do it if he’s haunted by Joe’s silence.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 36
Kudos: 706





	Push Away the Unimaginable

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by @prouvaireafterdark's tumblr post asking for fics where Joe threatens Booker after they escape and then is comforted by Nicky. I don't think this is what she had in mind, but I wrote it anyway.
> 
> Title from "It's Quiet Uptown" from Hamilton

It takes Booker a few months to get his footing with Quynh. She won't tell him why she sought him out or how she escaped, but he has plenty of time to hear her story. Being with her helps; it’s hard to wallow in self pity around someone who spent hundreds of years trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

Once he determines she’s as sane as she can be given all that has happened, they leave France to find the team. The journey lasts over a year, a year Booker spends healing. He doesn't expect to find Quynh’s company so relaxing, but there's something about the way she takes everything in stride that sets him at ease. It’s almost like having Andy back.

She spends the year telling him stories about her time with Andy, about finding Joe and Nicky, though she still calls them Yusuf and Nicolo. He’s heard some of the stories before, but always tinged with regret instead of the pleasure Quynh seems to find in remembering and sharing them. When he confesses what he’s done, why he’s alone, she shrugs it off with a blase, “When you live forever, you make a lot of mistakes.”

By the time they find the team in Scotland, Quynh has a working knowledge of modern technology, and Booker doesn’t feel the crushing weight of grief with every breath. Nile is the one to spot them. She greets Booker with a hug and stares at Quynh with wide eyes. When Joe and Nicky come up behind her, he watches their astonishment and joy at seeing Quynh, but he also notices their caution. A caution he knows he put that there.

HIs heart drops when he realizes Andy isn’t with them, but Nile quickly tells him she is traveling. After a series of complicated missions for Copley, they are taking an extended break. No one questions Quynh’s request that Booker wait along with them for Andy’s return.

In the months they wait, he notices how the team has changed. On the surface, it’s the same, days spent training or relaxing, nights spent drinking and sharing stories. NIle fills Booker in on her training, sometimes playing up her mishaps and persters Quynh for stories about the early days with Andy. As he watches them interact, Booker can’t help but see the subtle differences, not so much cracks as shifts.

The first few days, Joe and Nicky spend a lot of time alone with Quynh, he assumes dealing with the effects of her capture and imprisonment. There is a noticeable drop in their wariness after, but it never completely goes away. Booker sees how their focus, after each other, always first focused on each other, centers on Nile. Years of watching them communicate without words lets him see how they work to make sure she is pushed when necessary, but always comfortable and safe. Like everything they do together it’s seamless, Booker doubts Nile even notices how one of them is always watching when she trains with Quynh or how they redirect the conversation to lighter stories when she reaches for the cross around her neck.

Eight months after they arrive, Booker’s reprieve is shattered by Quynh’s quiet gasp of “Andromache.”

He knows he’s not the only one with tears in his eyes as they watch the two women embrace. Nor is anyone surprised when instead of unpacking, Andy leaves again with Quynh after a few hours. She hugs Booker tightly, whispering “Thank you,” and kissing him on the cheek before they leave. He should be grateful for another chance to see her, but saying goodbye again burns painfully in his chest.

It’s late when Andy and Quynh depart so they do their best to treat it like any other night. But when Booker wakes the next morning, he knows his time is up. He thinks about sneaking off without saying anything, not wanting to face the awkwardness of goodbyes. Nile has treated him like he never left, and he doesn’t know if he would want her to ask him to stay or just let him go. Nicky has treated him like a guest, pleasant but distant. He hates to think of their time ending with a handshake or worse just a nod of acknowledgement.

But that leaves Joe, Joe who hasn’t spoken to him or looked directly at him the entire eight months he’s been there. Booker has no idea how he’ll survive another ninety-seven years alone, but he knows he can’t do it if he’s haunted by Joe’s silence.

He waits to leave his room until he knows Nile and Nicky will be at church. Joe’s sketching at the kitchen table, just where Booker expected him to be. He sees the moment Joe notices his bags, but he never looks up, his gaze never rising to meet Booker’s.

“Joe,” his indifference pushes Booker to speak. “Are you really not going to speak to me for the entire hundred years. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“It can’t be any other way,” Joe keeps sketching.

“I can’t,” Booker doesn’t want to beg, but just remembering the six months alone feels him with dread. “Andy doesn’t have a hundred years.”

Joe closes his book although he still doesn’t look up. “You think I would, I _could_ , keep Andy from you? She will come to you when she is ready, as will NIle, and possibly even Nicky. The hundred years is for the team, so enough time passes that we can die with you and for you again as we did many times without fearing we will die because of you. That we decide together, the rest we leave to ourselves.”

“What about you, Joe? What will you decide?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“You have to know I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did.” Maybe he can make Joe understand how it all got away from him.

“Don’t lie to me!” Joe slams the book on the table and meets Booker’s eyes for the first time. The pain and anger he sees takes his breath away.

“I am not a stupid man, and neither are you, Booker. You knew, you knew exactly what would happen. We’ve told you, and you’ve seen what happens when we are discovered. You knew this would not be some gentle scientific inquiry. If all they wanted was DNA, you could have given that yourself without us ever knowing. The abduction, the insistence on having all of us, you knew what that meant. You just hoped we never found out you were behind it.”

“I just wanted it to end.”

“You think that matters? Don’t you think Andy has wished for it to end? For years, for centuries, long before we even found you, do you think she didn’t wish for a final death? But she never sacrificed anyone else to get one. She never sentenced us to years of torture and experimentation in exchange for a slim hope of peace.”

While Joe is speaking, the door opens behind him, but he doesn't notice. Nicky and Nile stand in the doorway, eyes darting between Booker and Joe. Booker sees Nile start to walk forward, but Nicky stops her, and puts a finger to his lips so she knows not to interupt. 

“You don’t understand,” Booker begins, his voice starting to shake.

“Bullshit!” Joe stands up from the table. “I am not young like Nile or tired like Andy or even kind like Nicky. I will not be moved by your excuses. You said I had Nicky, and all you had was your grief. That after two hundred years, the loss of your family was so sharp, death was the only way out. The pain, still so strong, you would let us all suffer to end it.”

Booker nods not sure what point Joe is trying to make.

“You had your family for what, a few decades?”

“I loved them,” Booker shouts at Joe, thinking he is trying to dismiss them.

“Of that I have no doubt.” Joe steps forward until he is close enough for Booker to see how much he is still holding back. “I have loved Nicky for a millennium. For a thousand years, he has been my heart, my soul, all that I love of this world. I have feared nothing but being parted from him. I have watched him die countless times, and I know I will watch him die again, but each time my heart doesn’t beat until his beats again.”

“Joe,” Booker holds his hands up, suddenly desperate for Joe to stop speaking, but he ignores him.

“In that lab, I remembered there are fates worse than death. They hurt him, my Nicky, my beautiful Nicolo, over and over again. And I could not touch him, I could not comfort him. Do you understand, I had to watch them torture him, and I could not hold his hand or feel his heart beat. That would have been our fate for decades if you had your way, Nicky in pain and me helpless to stop it, condemned to watch him suffer endlessly. I would have found a way to kill him myself if it was the only way to make it stop. So you tell me, will my grief be less in a hundred years? Will I stop being afraid to close my eyes because all I see is how he bit his lip and clenched his fists to keep from screaming? Will a hundred years be long enough for me to forget every wound I watched them inflict?” 

Joe stands before him, shaking, tears streaming down his face, and Booker is speechless in the wake of his despair. There is nothing he can say, nothing he can do for Joe, but Nicky comes up and embraces him from behind.

“Yusuf, my love, don’t cry. I am here, I am safe.”

Booker watches as they sink to the floor in the kitchen, holding each other as they cry. They speak in a mix of English, Italian and Arabic. He knows he shouldn’t be here, but he can’t bring himself to walk away. He sees Nile is as frozen is place as he is.

“My sweet Yusuf, why did you not tell me?” Nicky whispers as he wipes the tears from Joe’s face, kissing away the new ones that fall.

“Nicolo,” Joe rests his forehead against Nicky’s. “I could not stop them. I’m so sorry; I did not protect you.”

“No, no,” Nicky soothes him, holds him close. “We protect each other, always together. Remember, always together.”

Booker begins to back out of the room, the weight of what he’s done heavier than it has been since he realized Andy was no longer immortal. He will wait his hundred years; he will wait a hundred more if it means he never has to see them in this kind of pain again.

Nile moves to follow him, but he shakes his head and points to the kettle on the stove. When Joe and Nicky come back to themselves, they will need her. He spares one last glance for Joe and Nicky, committing the sight of them wrapped around each other to memory, before walking out and closing the door.


End file.
